PRINCELY JEWELS FROM THE CREVASSE OF POST ROCK

[erickelric]

THIS THREAD WAS MEANT TO BE LISTENED TO ON VINYL

haha I got it^ Lutzko always on top of it
played that song some OH freeks wrote about you at the bar tonight

[neighborhoodwatch]

All this shit sucks. You people should be listenin to the new Gorillaz album. THATS post rock

[Christopher Lasch]

caught David Grubbs taking a $HORT BATH in the $PEAK IN TONGUE$ basement circa 1997.

[Christopher Lasch]

Paul Newman...THE BAND

[erickelric]

caught David Grubbs taking a $HORT BATH in the $PEAK IN TONGUE$ basement circa 1997.

gross

Paul Newman...THE BAND

grosser


I bet Lutszko owned a couple of A Minor Forest albums. Maybe even (shudder) Tristeza, certainly no Album Leaf, I hope to Jesus.

PHYSICS the band

[DJ Rick]

Sorry...I was also on the TermBo blink this weekend (like most weekends), so I missed this discussion 'til. Mostly, what needs to be said has been said. With a few exceptions, I like all the shit you guys like and hate all the shit you guys hate. And the term post-rock itself is just the worst. Too many of the "post-" and "-core" genres are so arbitrary. I can't remember who wrote it, but there was a link that was forwarded around to just about every punk/indie/DIY-music-centered online community back in the pre-Facebook/MySpace/even-before-Friendster internet stone age when we all checked 4-5 different Yahoogroups, and some wise-ass wrote alternate definitions of various rock subgenres, and my favorite part was where he said that the prefix "post-", when appearing before a music genre, is the same as saying that music genre "with all the fun taken out of it".

There's plenty of variety of cool shit one could call "post-rock" if defined liberally, but anyone that revels in the term post-rock is generally an idiot. Occasionally, students come through the radio class thinking that this post-rock shit is the pinnacle of music, and they can't be convinced otherwise so quickly. But when confronted with what has been referred to here as "proto-post-rock", you can really see the cogs in their brains grinding together, and they either frustratedly quit and go back to their dorm room shrines to Explosions in the Sky and Sigur Ros, or the gears start rewinding and they wanna hear more of the anomalous stuff that happened in the 60s and 70s. The former more often than the latter.

Speaking of "post-" and "-core" genres mostly being arbitrary....anyone remember "slow-core"? I remember getting confused when I read it in CMJ. I was like....This doesn't sound like Toadliquor??!?! Sometimes that came up in reviews of whatfunlifewas by Bedhead, who had some brilliant moments back then.

[Damn]

I don't even know what it's called, that bullshit that falls somewhere inbetween post-rock, post-hardcore, and doom metal, that sucks on the teet of math rock.  Isis, Pelican, Russian Circles, Red Sparrows... Buncha namby-pamby, former mosh-core fruits that discovered Neurosis and have decided to take a more "intellectual" path than their camo-shorted, flat-billed contemporaries.

You actually came close. It's "thinking man's metal", right? And one of the honchos of hydrahead even invented the term. Perfect, still somehow amazing and, really, in its way a lot more entertaining than a lot of actual music. Reading those interviews can crack a grown man up. Concept albums about climate change waitin' to be rediscovered by ironic hipschter minions of future daze.

[Jared]

Thinking man's metal!  Awesome!  What happened to thinking about dungeons, goblins, and Satan?

[LayawayButch]

Thinking man's metal!  Awesome!  What happened to thinking about dungeons, goblins, and Satan?

PLAY WITH ZORN, PLAY WITH YOURSELF...BUT ULTIMATELY HAVE A GOOD TIME DOING IT OR YOU MAY AS WELL CUT IT OFF.

[clif]

PLAY WITH ZORN, PLAY WITH YOURSELF...BUT ULTIMATELY HAVE A GOOD TIME DOING IT OR YOU MAY AS WELL CUT IT OFF.

Truth

[Indoorsman]

  I think the nadir of post-rock has to be Scala.  About once a year an enthusiastic review in the Wire tricks me into buying some shitty record, and one mid-90s year it was Scala.  Dreadful.

  I'm loving the idea of "proto-post-" anything.  Proto-post-rock would be rock, right?

The first two Labradford records were good space-float; anything after that is to be strictly avoided.  Flying Saucer Attack were mostly great, with the notable exception of the last LP (Mirror?).  I'll defend Kinski circa their second album, and they were great live around that time.  I thought Moonshake were good, and the male vocalist's songs wouldn't sound out of place next to the Balaclavas.  The chick vocalist's follow-on, Laika, were gawdawful.  The first two Tortoise albums seemed neat at the time, and in our Mecht Mensch-loving household it was stunning to see Dan Bitney in their midst.  Live they seemed way too mannered; I still think of that show fondly, as it was the one time I went to the Antenna during the brief period when it was air conditioned.  Mogwai were pretty dull; Ganger were like a lesser Mogwai live, never heard a record by them.  I quite like Bardo Pond, but wouldn't call 'em post-rock.  I'll stick up for Godspeed You Black Emperor, esp. early on, but they were a band of diminishing returns & any time I think of them, I imagine that any conversation with them would be a horrible jumble of vegan-flavored anti-vaccination rants.

  My housemate to Michael Gira @ a Neurosis-organized event: "What'd you think of Neurosis?"  Gira: "They're, uh, nice guys."

[brettwagg]

Actually, the G!YBE guys are supernice and down to earth, some of them run the best venues in Montreal (Casa Del Popolo, Sala Rosa) and Dave Bryant has an awesome recording studio (The Pines), and my favorite sound man to work with in the city. And he is also a great neighbor. No vegan or anti vaccination talks

[Sailor Jason]

That Talk Talk interview is excellent. Mark Hollis needs to come out of hiding and do something.

Moonshake seems more shoegazey than "post rock" but I've only heard a few things. The Laika chick is named Margaret Fiedler and she replaced Bruce Gilbert after he left Wire. She was pretty solid when I last saw them live. She's also backed Polly Harvey and God Is My Co-Pilot (why are they NEVER mentioned anymore??).

I must be the only person around here who enjoys Spiderland. Although I don't listen to it as much as I used to when I was 17. Tortoise is totally unmemorable. I had a co-worker who used to play that shit all the time and thought I was too "conservative" with my tastes because I didn't like it. Shipping News, June of 44, Pelican ugh, really unbearable. Is Polvo considered post-rock these days?

[Indoorsman]

Moonshake were referenced in Simon Reynolds' post-rock piece in Wire, which I think is the origin of the term,  but like a lot of that magazine's big pieces it tried to tie a lot of disparate stuff together to conjure up a movement, w/ the common thread here being some hip-hop influence - Moonshake used some samplers, as did MBV.

  I think Polvo were/are considered math rock or some such.  I'll stick up for their first coupla records, too, even if Acapulco's gonna make fun of me for it.

  I apologize for my prejudice re: GYBE & will come armed with a tub of foie gras & polio-free if I visit Montreal.

[DJ Rick]

I don't even know what it's called, that bullshit that falls somewhere inbetween post-rock, post-hardcore, and doom metal, that sucks on the teet of math rock.  Isis, Pelican, Russian Circles, Red Sparrows... Buncha namby-pamby, former mosh-core fruits that discovered Neurosis and have decided to take a more "intellectual" path than their camo-shorted, flat-billed contemporaries.

You actually came close. It's "thinking man's metal", right? And one of the honchos of hydrahead even invented the term. Perfect, still somehow amazing and, really, in its way a lot more entertaining than a lot of actual music. Reading those interviews can crack a grown man up. Concept albums about climate change waitin' to be rediscovered by ironic hipschter minions of future daze.

There's only a few records that could be guilty of the above which I can enjoy....

A certain Keelhaul 7" called Ornamental Iron
moments of late Hellchild

Anyone got that Keelhaul 7" to sell me?